President Donald Trump lashed out at “scum” who revealed his much-championed strikes against Iran were likely far less effective than he claims.
“CNN is scum, MSDNC is scum, the New York Times is scum. They’re bad people, they’re sick,” Trump raged Wednesday at a press conference in the Netherlands, where he is currently attending a NATO summit.
“What they’ve done is they’ve tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less,” Trump went on. “The generals and all of the people who did a good job, they get demeaned by these idiots at CNN, who can’t get ratings. The place is dying, nobody even wants to waste their time going on any of their shows, so they form what [sic] The New York Times, which is dying also. Without Trump, you wouldn’t have a New York Times.”
It follows after both publications reported leaked findings from a classified military intelligence report that suggested Trump’s weekend strikes against three separate nuclear sites in Iran fell far short of an “obliteration,” as Trump claims, and had likely only set the country’s nuclear program back by a mere matter of months.
The coverage of the leaked documents had already prompted a flurry of typically bellicose Truth Social posts from Trump stretching into the small hours of the night.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” he wrote, adding: “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”
During Wednesday’s press conference, however, Trump did at one point appear to soften his tone, conceding that there may have been something to the report’s findings after all.
“The intelligence was very inconclusive, the intelligence says ‘we don’t know, it could have been very severe’,” he told reporters at a NATO press conference in the Netherlands. “That’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct.”
Even so, he swiftly rowed back from anything that might have sounded like a reviewed assessment of the damage on his part. “But I think that we can take… we don’t know… it was very severe, it was an obliteration,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment. Meanwhile, Secretary Hegseth said in a statement provided by the Pentagon that “our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.”
“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target—and worked perfectly,” he went on. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
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